Release

SETH TURNER REACHED FOR HIS blanket with a hand that wasn't there. He'd been half-asleep, but now he was awake and filled with a red heat that burned behind his eyes, in his gut. Every day he had to relearn the raw truth: his left hand was gone, ripped apart by a bullet, tossed aside by the doctor upstairs. Without his consent. He hated her for it. Hated her touching him even to give him an exam. Hated her voice when she tried to convince him she'd done the right thing--saved his life. Did it ever occur to her that he didn't want this life? He pulled the blanket up with his right hand and settled back on the pillow. It was a different kind of torture, knowing she was sleeping upstairs. That he would have to live here, with her, for months yet to come while he learned to use the prosthesis. It had already been three months since she'd performed the surgery. It had taken this long for the wound to heal, for his skin to form a useless lump three inches up from what used to be his wrist. He'd been in bar fights, he'd been in wars, he'd even survived Delta Force training, but nothing had been harder. He understood now why men, good men, turned to drugs and alcohol after they'd been mutilated. The pain was the least of it. The part he couldn't stand, that made him want to die, was the loss of everything that was important about him. Which was the part Dr. Harper Douglas didn't get. To make things worse, to add the goddamned cherry on top, there were his dreams. They came every night now. At first he'd shaken them off, but there was no use pretending they were going to stop. He woke in the middle of the night sweating and hard, his erection throbbing as images of her, of goddamn Harper, made him ache until, with his one good hand, he took care of business. Even that didn't end his torment. Once he'd come, thoughts of her haunted him long into the pale mornings. With luck he'd fall asleep again, but mostly his luck had run out. By the time she came downstairs he hated her again. He tried to be civil, but it didn't come easy. Harper, with her no-nonsense attitude and her sharp blue eyes, looked at him as if he were a piece of meat, a patient, not a man. Her in her white robe, tight at the waist and crossing at her breasts. She wore no bra when she came from her bedroom, and though her breasts weren't large, they moved when she did, swaying just enough to sear a picture in his head. His hand moved down to his erection, and he thought again that he should feel grateful that he'd lost his left hand. He wrote with his right, threw with his right, beat off with it. But his left, that was his rudder, his stabilizer. Without it, how would he use the sniper rifle? Reload? How could he defend himself, let alone kill a man? Shit, he couldn't even tie his shoes. He heated again as he remembered finding the slip-on loafers that had appeared by his bed. Harper had put his boots in a cupboard and replaced them with grand-dad shoes, something a crip like him could handle. Shifting again in the hospital bed, he wished for the hundredth time that the bullet had hit him right between the eyes. Not that he'd want to abandon Nate and the others, but Jesus. What was he supposed to do now? He hadn't even realized that he'd only ever seen himself as a warrior. Not even that--as a weapon. He'd been good for exactly that and nothing else. And now he was broken, a piece of junk to be thrown in the scrap pile. He closed his eyes and prayed for sleep. What he got instead was a wave of need and the cursed images of Harper torturing his soul. THE WALLS OF THE house were mostly gone, but the bathroom was still private. Four walls, a ceiling and a door complete with lock. Harper stared at the sink, at the faucet that dripped brown rust instead of water, and all she could think was that she couldn't treat the child with her hands so filthy. The chance of infection was too great. But the water...the water hLeigh, Jo is the author of 'Release ', published 2007 under ISBN 9780373793051 and ISBN 0373793057.